Review: GOD OF CARNAGE at New Jewish Theatre

The New Jewish Theatre is a pretty classy joint.  They have a long history of splendidly professional productions.  Their current offering, God of Carnage, displays that polish in all aspects—save only in the script itself. 

The play, by Yasmina Reza, deals with assignment of guilt, atonement, punishment, reconciliation—and parenting.  In an affluent home in Brooklyn two couples meet to discuss a playground fight between their eleven-year-old sons, Ben and Henry.  Ben smashed Henry in the face with a stick, breaking two teeth.  What’s to be done?

Technically this production merits another gold star for NJT.  The set, by Rob Lippert, is strikingly attractive.  It’s all in black, white and grays—sleek and modern, but comfortable.  On the back wall is a very large painting in the Jackson Pollack “splatter” style.  It loudly whispers of slightly bloody chaos.  A Henry-Moore-ish sculpture yawns at us from a corner. 

The hosts for this awkward meeting are Michael and Veronica Novak.  He’s a hardware wholesaler;  she’s a writer (well, she’s published one article in a collection and she “has a book coming out in January”.)  Her focus is on the social traumas of Africa.  Oh—and she works part time in an art history bookshop.

Their guests are Alan Raleigh, a class-action defense attorney for Big Pharma, and his wife Annette, who is in “wealth management”. 

So, the child of a moderately rich family got his teeth nocked out by the child of a very rich family.

All are committed to resolving this issue with utmost civility.  But … complications arise.

The cast is splendid.  

Nick Freed, as Alan, is the epitome of the handsome, confidant, ambitious corporate lawyer.  Alan is much too busy to be concerned with this nuisance incident of the teeth.  Annette has dragged him here.  In the midst of this parental discussion Alan constantly answers his cell-phone to manage a potentially catastrophic scandal surrounding a beta-blocking drug his client has recklessly put on the market without proper testing.  Multi-million-dollar class-action suits hover in the air!

Bridgette Bassa, as Annette, is beautifully calm and polite, but her inward stress eventually becomes apparent when she voluminously vomits all over a coffee-table full of art books—including Veronica’s precious Kokoschka catalogue!

Joel Moses plays Michael, the hardware guy.  Now Michael, at first, tries to agree with everybody.  As the conflict heats and accusations fill the air he claims his right to be a macho “Neanderthal” male.  (And yet he’s thrown away his kids’ hamster because he “just can’t touch rodents”.)  Moses, who showed power and conscience and charisma in West End’s The Christians a few years ago, does nicely in this role as a very silly and weak man.

But it is Christina Rios who makes this evening!   She plays Veronica with such sparkle and limitless energy and deep commitment.  I first met Ms. Rios seventeen years ago when we were both cast in a production of Into the Woods.  As Cinderella she did the world’s most perfect prat-fall!  Every night!  Since then she’s been busy directing, leading a theater company, founding another—and having four kids.  I hadn’t seen her on stage in some years, but what a wonder she is!  Her Veronica is deeply real every milli-second she’s on stage.   Now Meryl Streep has a similar attention to detail.  But with Streep you’re aware that every bit has been consciously planned.  Ms. Rios actually becomes the woman she’s playing, so the details are all utterly natural.  She’s fierce! 

So the acting is really, really good.  But the script!  Now, Jasmina Reza has a great facility  for ugly banter.  In her previous play, Art, the first half is nothing but endless kvetching.  In God of Carnage we watch a civilized discussion devolve into a train-wreck.  But hell, everybody loves a train-wreck!  Now God of Carnage has won both the Olivier Award and a Tony for best play.  But then so did The Play that Goes Wrong—a play about a set that falls apart.  God of Carnage is at least better structured than Art.   It does indeed climb (through rising voices and frantic physical chases) to a climax.  It touches on gender differences and liberal/conservative pretensions.  But basically it shows us just a train-wreck.  Ms. Reza’s facility with angry banter gives us an evening that is, yes, facile.

The women in this script are believably women, but the men are the merest cartoons. I was a tiny bit insulted.

The human appetite for train-wrecks is shown in the roars of laughter filling the hall (and in the Mixed Martial Arts structure now rising on the White House lawn).    

Before I close I must praise Director Gad Guterman for his beautiful pacing of the show—and for a grand, effective pause or two.  Costumer Michele Friedman Siler does her usual supremely professional job.  Lighting, by Jason Lawshee-Gress is simple, but perfect;  the light on that great central painting makes just the right statement.  The gifted Kareem Deanes designed the sound—opening with a rich, stressful modern string quartet, and ending with a gentle touch of distant children’s carousel music.

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